Five Meme: A Civil Tongue
by curi
Summary: Five times River Tam left Jayne Cobb speechless. River/Jayne. Last edited 08/12.
1. First Time

This is a "Five Meme" response to thecricket's prompt.

_Jayne, you will keep a civil tongue in that mouth, or I will sew it shut. Is there an understanding between us?  
— Malcolm Reynolds to Jayne Cobb, Firefly episode 1: "Serenity"_

**First Time**

The girl. The evil, vicious, killer-woman _girl_. What kind of crazy people were runnin' this 'verse, anyway, to make a girl who could do _that_?

She weren't a human bein'. That damn girl was a _machine_. Just give her the right order and watch her take out a bar full of grown, tough, experienced men like they weren't nothin' more than puffs of air.

It was sexy, o'course. Gorram beautiful, truth be told.

Beautiful like a sword. 'Ceptin a sword didn't have a brain of it's own. (Not that this girl seemed to have much of a brain, but there hadn't been no one orderin' her to cut on him before Ariel, had there?)

No, more beautiful like a _snake_. All manner of lithe and graceful and smooth—and deadly. A livin', breathin' killin' machine.

And he'd had to put himself in the middle of her act. One minute, he'd been observin' her violence with admiration and arousal and a tiny bit of fear, and the next—

Nothin'. Abso–ruttin'–lutely _nothin'_.


	2. Double Take

**Double Take**

He'd had plenty of interaction with that she-snake since she'd near unmanned him in The Maidenhead. He'd had plenty to say about her deadly little tendencies, too. She was a danger to him—she'd proved that twice now—and a danger to the rest of them. Hell, she woulda shot _Mal_, her own dear Captain Daddy, if her brother hadn't used them magical words of his.

Still didn't quite get how that worked, but he'd found out it wouldn't work on him and that was good enough.

And then they were on Miranda, and she was carryin' on somethin' awful, askin' the Almighty to turn her into a stone. Jayne'd heard what she was really sayin' and damn if he didn't feel the exact same way. 'Course, he didn't want to say it out loud, 'cause it was only gonna make the horrible worse.

Then there was that god-awful recordin' and the girl retchin' in the corner, and damn if he didn't feel the same way, again. Which was unsettlin', 'cause weren't no way he wanted to be feelin' the same _anything_ as the moonbrain.

The standoff on Mr. U's moon, though—that was what he couldn't stop thinkin' about, even if he had no desire to discuss it. They'd done what they could in front of the blast doors, and when they'd retreated to wait behind 'em, all hell'd _really_ broken loose. And even though he'd meant to live, he weren't so sure he was gonna with the doc dyin' and them runnin' out of ammo and the girl still cowerin'—

She was goin' through them doors a'fore he could stop her, and damned if he hadn't meant to try. Reaver-death weren't no kind of death, even for a snake.

But the bag was in, and the doors were closed, and all he could do was wait. Try not to imagine things and fail miserably. Zoe beside him and he couldn't rely on her, what with her injury and her loss. And Kaylee and the doc were out and 'Nara—hell, 'Nara was a whore, not a fighter.

But that girl _was_ a fighter, and she weren't gonna make it neither, which meant this was his last stand. He really was gonna be killed by his own worst fear.

He weren't rightly sure how long Mal was gone, how long them doors had been closed, but Mal came back and asked after the girl and Jayne _really_ didn't want to answer.

The doors opened and it took him a few blinks to register what he was seein'. And when he did, though his mouth dropped open, everything was silent.


	3. Triple Play

**Triple Play**

"KAYLEE! Keep it the ruttin' hell _down_!" Jayne pounded on the hatch leading to her bunk. "Ain't a body can sleep with all your sexin' _noises_!"

And those sounds just got louder. Well, fine. If he wasn't gonna get no peace in his bunk, he was gonna go to the cargo bay. The bay had his weights and space and _quiet_ when everyone was sleepin'.

The mercenary tromped through _Serenity_'s corridors and stairways, muttering under his breath. When he got so's he could see the bay, he saw _her_. That—girl-thing. Weren't right to think of her as a snake no more, what with her savin' their lives'n all. Didn't know quite what to think of her, to tell the truth.

Right now, though, his body was kinda decidin' it for him. 'Cause she was _dancin'_. Only it weren't fancy, stuck-up dancin'. It was like she was fightin' and dancin' at the same time, all physical and _now_. She weren't distant from nothin'.

It was like—like she was sexin' the whole gorram _'verse_: the air, the black, the stars, and all those rocks that tried to call themselves planets.

Then she looked at him, halfway through some bendy, stretchy move, and he could just _feel_ his body over hers, in that position. Their bodies, slidin' back and forth against each other, dancin' that violent passion. And he'd be able to run his hands all along that smooth, hard little body and she'd call his name—

"Jayne!" She'd call his name, and he'd press against her harder, and they'd _dance_—

"Jayne?"

His eyes slid back into focus and the girl was in still in that bendy position, but she was talkin' at him.

Huh. Maybe he'd just go back to his bunk.


	4. Fourth and One

**Fourth and One**

It was so tiny when it happened, but it had the most profound effect.

She was standing still against the force of his anger, trying to remember her own feelings.

It had been a successful drop, all things considered. After all, the objective for a drop was to exchange goods for as much money as possible—an amount equal to or greater than the agreed-upon fee. They'd walked away with twice the platinum they'd been promised, which was unheard-of, especially for _Serenity_.

He was so _angry_.

It must have been how she'd gotten them that platinum, then, that had enraged him so. Hmph. He didn't have to make such a big deal about it. It wasn't as though she'd _tried_ to hear what their contact was thinking or to know what he and his crew _really_ got up to.

When she had heard what those—those—those _snakes_ did to women and young girls and boys, saw what they thought when they looked at _her_—It was self-defense, really, Jayne. Can't you see? They wanted to _hurt me_. And they had already hurt too many people and it was time for them to stop hurting us all.

But that wasn't right either. He wasn't yelling about _who_ she'd killed, because he'd been in there with her, too, fighting. He didn't have a problem with taking those people out, so what—

Suddenly there was a flash from his brain, the image of her broken, bleeding, used by the snake-people, dead.

The sweet ache of his affection, his fear and possessiveness, caused a few tears to trail down her cheeks.

He wasn't looking when she slipped her hand into his, but he ceased his rant immediately. When she brought their joined hands to her face to wipe away the tears, he met her eyes with his own, tender and afraid.

_It was such a small thing,_ she thought.


	5. Five Seconds

**Five Seconds**

It was another one of those nights, with Kaylee and the doc makin' horrific sounds fit to set any grown man on edge. _Or woman,_ he thought as he entered the cargo bay and found River already there.

He watched her glide across the hard floor and studied the lines her body made. Though he didn't want her to stop, he wished he could somehow be next to her, holding her hand again.

He'd fallen in love with the way it felt in his big paws. He loved all her little joints under the calloused pads of his fingers. He relished tracing the lines across her sweet, tiny palms—under the table at meals or as they sat in the back of the mule.

He loved the way her fingers would study his hands, loved the way those delicate digits slipped between his own and made him feel _claimed_, like he belonged to her and to their life on _Serenity_. He loved trying to catch her finger in his meaty grip; they'd discovered his reflexes weren't so slow, after all—or maybe she'd let him win.

He'd never been so intimately acquainted with another person's hands without being _intimate_. Hell, he'd never been so intimately acquainted with another person's hands at all. And here he was, so familiar with River Tam's fingers and palms and lifelines that, even now, he could practically _feel_ them under his own.

And then they _were_ under his own.

He opened his mouth to say something to the woman before him. But when she pressed her lips to his for the very first time, he supposed she already knew, being a Reader and all.


End file.
